


Family Portrait

by sign_of_one



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Episode: s05e12 Jungle Moon, Family Fluff, Gen, Nonbinary Character, dream - Freeform, text adventure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-12
Updated: 2018-03-12
Packaged: 2019-03-30 09:34:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13948770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sign_of_one/pseuds/sign_of_one
Summary: Stevonnie gets sidetracked by family feelings during a very important dream adventure.





	Family Portrait

You are standing on the vast carpet of the Facet 7 Living Room. A monumental couch looms to the east. There is a portrait photo on the north wall. Exits are SOUTH and WEST. 

**> check photo**

That command doesn’t parse.

**> look photo**

There’s nothing called “photo” here.

**> LOOK at PORTRAIT**

It’s a photo of you with Mom and Dad. You’re in the middle.

You’re wearing that pretty black top with the white collar that Mom bought for you. She wanted the whole family to look their best. You can’t even see her carefully-chosen outfit in the final picture. She’s almost crowded out of the corner of the frame; her two favorite people are taking up too much room. She looks really, really happy.

Dad’s smiling, too. His new glasses look pretty sharp when he wears them with that shirt and tie. He’s unusually confident, maybe even smug, not self-conscious about his image or being a good role model or looking like a goof in front of his kid. It seems like he’s about to call you “scout” or “kiddo,” or crack a joke about how he’s got you beat (for now!) in the beard department, just to see you laugh. His arm must be reassuringly behind your back. He looks like he would protect you if you needed him to, but he feels like you’ve got things figured out.

You can’t remember the last time you saw Mom looking so naturally calm. There’s no sign of work trouble on her face, her eyes are bright, and her brow is totally free of furrows. You guess that it’s because she isn’t trying to control the photo shoot or get everybody in place; she just looks like she’s enjoying having her family all together. It’s hard to square her calm and smiling face with the hint of worry on yours.

You keep looking at your eyebrows. They’re thick and dark and they make you feel kind of cool and mature on good days. In this picture, they’re arched in a way that makes you look nervous. You’re smiling, but your eyes and eyebrows say you aren’t totally comfortable.

It doesn’t make sense. You’re dressed well in nice clothes that actually fit, your skin’s looking good, you’ve got some handsome scruff coming in, and…

...look, Mom and Dad obviously love you a lot. It’s the first thing you notice about the picture, and seeing it from the outside makes your cheeks warm. You shouldn’t have anything to worry about. Maybe you just felt out of place that day.

When was this taken?

**> look portrait**

You were so scared to tell Mom and Dad who you really are- to come out to them as Stevonnie. You remember sitting on that monumental couch, waiting for them both to get home, feeling like you were going to come apart at the seams. In the end, though, you had nothing to worry about. 

You cried, and Mom cried too, but she said it was from realizing that you’d been hurting and hadn’t been able to tell her and Dad. You had another talk like the one after the bad stuff at the hospital that night, about trust and love and needing to know what’s happening in your life. Dad said he was proud of you for finally telling them and that you’d always be his little kiddo, but mostly he hugged you for a long time.

They started calling you Stevonnie right away. Mom gave you that top as a gift a few days later, not even for your birthday. She would let you do more of the talking when she asked how you were doing, sit down with you and really listen, and ask you to help in the kitchen so you two could catch up while you cooked. Dad would make a dumb pun about ketchup and put his arm around your shoulder. He was genuinely excited about showing you how to shave. It was embarrassing, but not bad.

**> look portrait**

Did they really not understand why you couldn’t tell them?

All those rules. Banning you from TV for a thousand years. That _abacus._ Hiding things became as natural as breathing, totally innocuous little things like new friends or internet history. You had never heard them talk about stuff like this at home. You were so afraid of disappointing them. 

How is there not just a hint of that reaction you were dreading? Was it really that unreasonable?

**> look portrait**

Looking at this picture makes your cheeks hot. It feels like some kind of wave is passing over you.

You remember talking to your best friend about nuclear families: households that consist of two parents and their child (and/or children). You started to feel self-conscious about not fitting into that picture, wondering whether something was wrong with your family. Was your best friend ashamed of you? You remember watching your best friend with their family, hugging Rose Quartz’s scabbard, and wishing your Mom was there.

As you think about it more, you don’t know why it bothered you. Your family is right there in the photo: you, Mom, and Dad. You’re in the middle.

You want to cry, but you don’t understand why. It’s a perfectly good picture. They’re so welcoming and glad you’re with them, and they wanted to make sure that they had a new picture with Priyanka and Doug and Stevonnie to hang on the wall. It’s so sweet and sentimental that it hurts to look at your eyes and know that in that snapshot of time, you felt like you didn’t belong in between them, being loved.

**> look portrait**

That must be it. You look uncomfortable because something is missing. 

Mom doesn’t have her Diamond eyes, for one. It shouldn’t be surprising that the villainous Rose Quartz is absent from the photo, but you’d think that Mister Universe would be there, or at least some of Rose’s lackeys. It’s a family picture.

**> look portrait**

Better get back to the adventure.

**Author's Note:**

> https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/steven-universe/images/1/18/Jungle_Moon_106.png
> 
> I have really strong feelings about this background detail! That portrait put a huge smile on my face and I immediately wanted to write something with Stevonnie just lingering on that aspect of their dream.
> 
> I don't know why it's a text adventure. That's how the idea came to me and I ran with it before the inspiration died out!
> 
> Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed!


End file.
